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This won’t come as much of a surprise to our European visitors, but America is really, really conservative.

I mean, sure, there is such a thing as American liberalism, but even that skews to the right. American liberals want to change things, sure, but their idea of radical change is, you know, maybe be polite to each other? And possibly some tax dollars should fund some government programs, or something?

All of which is enough to drive the conservative end of our spectrum into a frothing frenzy, because the conservative end of our spectrum is somewhere to the right of Darth Vader. But even they talk about politeness and government spending.

Sometimes, if there weren’t a little (R.) or (D.) after a politician’s name it would be difficult to tell the two ideologies apart, and sometimes even then it is still difficult.

Because American politics is just very, very weird and it always has been.

I always promised myself that I would not use A+ as a political platform, and I am loathe to do it now. But I want to talk about something that actually connects in a very real way with the reason for A+’s existence.

Positivity is right there in our name. A+ was a place for positive thinking, asexual thinking, and thinking positively about sex and sexuality. We were founded as a place to talk about what does and doesn’t interest us, and why that might be. We were founded to listen to the observations of others, and to respectfully hear them and interact with them. We were meant to be [...]

When I decided to stop writing about asexuality ten years ago, I thought I had some very good reasons. After having written so much on the subject, I had started to feel that I was simply repeating myself and why should I bother? After all, everything I had already said was still available for all to see. Why keep harping on the same string?

The discussion would still go on, I knew, and the contributions of one person would hardly be missed. I decided to keep A+ open and functioning and I figured that would be enough from me. But, beyond simply keeping the lights on around here, I have literally contributed in no other way to the online presence of asexuality.

Of course, this didn’t mean that I simply stopped talking about the subject altogether. I have been out and about for quite some time, so my sexuality is well-known. Consequently, I am often the go-to asexual to ask when my friends occasionally have questions on the subject. And, recently, the question was this: “Hey, have you read this book?”

First and foremost, let me get this out of the way: the answer is, “No.” I have not read this book, and I am not about to comment on the contents of a book I haven’t read. Instead, it was simply the title that got me to thinking, and bad things happen when I start thinking. All of this is rather unfair of me. It is quite possible that the author of the book didn’t even come up with the title. And clearly, going on the reviews and awards the book has received indicates that it i [...]

This summer will likely mark two important milestones in the evolution of sexuality in the United States. The Supreme Court is expected to declare gay marriage legal in all 50 states by the end of the month, and a long-awaited drug for boosting women’s libido is on its way to FDA approval.

The controversial pharmaceutical, flibanserin, is meant to whet the sexual appetite of women diagnosed with Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder. But while they may feel troubled by their lack of interest in sex and would very much like to change that, there's another non-sexual type of person who is more likely to be content with the absence of sexual desire for either gender: asexuals.

Now recognized as a sexual orientation in its own right, asexuality is widely misunderstood, often mistakenly viewed as a sexual problem or just celibacy, something any sexual orientation can choose. Asexuals meanwhile are not making a choice to abstain from sex. It’s who they are.

[This post was originally written by site member Omnes et Nihil on March 13, 2008]

The real question is why people are looking for a “cause” of sexual orientation, or specific sexual orientations, to begin with. Proof or no proof is completely beside the point. If we’re going to talk about scientific evidence, we should consider all the interpretations of the data, not just some that appear convienent. But I don’t for a moment think that it is helpful–or even makes sense–to talk about scientific evidence surrounding the “causes” of sexual orientation. In fact, I think that argument is inherently problematic.

Arguing that sexual orientation (of any kind) is genetic / learned / socialised / set in the womb / ordained by some higher power / otherwise caused… basically all boils down to accepting the premise: if people can be made heterosexual, they should be made heterosexual, and if people can’t be made heterosexual, then society should accept everyone as they are.

It’s a brilliant tactic to avoid challenging heteronormativity, because no matter what cause of sexual orientation people believe, and no matter what legal and social rights people believe people should have as a result, we’re still protecting heterosexuality’s pedestal.

Personally, I’d rather see that pedestal fall, and give people social and political rights regardless of whether their love for other people is caused by genes, th [...]

[This post was originally written by site member Hu on January 27, 2008]

Plainness (Llaneza)Jorge Luis Borges, 1968

The garden’s grillwork gateopens with the ease of a pagein a much thumbed book,and, once inside, our eyeshave no need to dwell on objects already fixed and exact in memory.here habits and minds and the private languageall families inventare everyday things to me.What necessity is there to speakor pretend to be someone else?The whole house knows me,they’re aware of my worries and weakness.This is the best that can happen.What heaven perhaps will grant us:not to be wondered at or required to succeedbut simply to be let inas part of an undeniable Reality,like stones of the road, like trees.

Borges sometimes crops up on those lists of conjectured asexuals of the past — you know, the endless lists that grow on the Wikipedia article and have to be trimmed back like vines. We have to accept that anyone who died before the very recent appearance of an asexual identity can never be anything but an object of conjecture in this regard. It’s true that sexual lust ranked extraordinarily low among Borges’s favored themes, but plenty of scholars will tell you he was gay, which is really just as credible. Whatever the case, I would imagine him a sympathetic soul and certainly a voice we can turn to. This poem in particular stands among my favorite expressions of un [...]

[This post was originally written by site member Vittoria on February 28, 2008]

Sex is great. Fan-bloody-tastic. Not only is it fun, it’s good for you. Burns calories, reduces stress, lowers risk of heart attack, prostate cancer and endometriosis, reaffirms the emotional bond between partners. If people spent more time blowing each other they’d have less time to blow each other up—Make Love, Not War and all that. I love sex. More people should have it (safely). I don’t feel compelled to jump in the pile, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think anyone else who wants to shouldn’t. There are a lot worse things people could be doing with their bodies.

Yes, I’m one of those sex-positive asexuals, which some take to mean an asexual who has sex, but I’m at a loss to find a better phrase for being asexual but endorsing sex as healthy and natural. Some asexuals think every single thing to do with the act is gross, gross, gross and want to hear, see or think about none of it. Those people make me feel lucky that I find sex interesting, intellectually at least, because hating sex while living in the modern world would be rather like disdaining oxygen. It’s everywhere, so either find something about it interesting or resign yourself to being a life-long grump monkey.

I’ve been interested in sex since I was a pre-teen. As a teenager I realised that though I found sex fascinating the physical act didn’t interest m [...]

[This post was originally written by site member Spin on March 5, 2008]

My partner once remarked that since an asexual person’s love wasn’t about sexual attraction, it must be something more real and deep. That with an asexual you knew you were loved for who you are.

Sorry hon–and I do really love you–but that ain’t necessarily so. I can be shallow, too.

I’ve had more frivolous crushes than I can count on people I didn’t even like, for the stupidest reasons. I’ve noticed people based on their appearance, their scent, the way they write their fours. I’ve had feelings for girls simply because I found out they liked girls too. I’ve been interested in boys because they used to be girls. I’ve liked people because I couldn’t tell if they were a boy or a girl. I’ve fawned over men and women because they had a good singing voice or artistic skill, or because they were just so damned pretty I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Yeah, I’ve seen people on the street I instantly wanted to drag home for. . .tea.

Most enduring for me are intellectual infatuations–crushes on people’s brains, which sounds like a good enough reason for obsessing about someone, doesn’t it? But I’ve fallen for total jerks because they were intelligent and articulate.

I’m not immune to shallowness, and asexuality doesn’t make my love any more true or pure. Asexuality has always contributed to shyness about pursuing these attractions or being [...]

Most people on Apositive seem to agree that asexuality is not simply about whether or not somebody has sex, or enjoys sex, or even about whether or not somebody can want to have sex. It's about sexual attraction, and whether sexuality is a part of somebody's life and a necessary aspect of intimate relationships. The media like to portray asexuality as “Here's somebody who doesn't want sex.” Even many asexual people say something like “Asexuals don't experience sexual attraction, and don't want to have sex,” again making it about the act. But asexuality, as I understand it, is about more than some particular act, or group of acts – it's about not interacting with people along a sexual framework, and not desiring and requiring sexuality (note the -uality, the whole sexual mindset) to be a part of close relationships in the way that sexual people do. Thing is, it seems that sexuality, too, is about much more than the act of sex, even though wanting sex is a main part of the common description.

In David Jay's podcast #18, he interviews sex-positive sexuality-education advocate/activist Nora Dye, who biked across the country talking to sex-education folks. She says that “There's this sort of assumption, or belief out there, that when I said sexuality, people thought [I meant] sex. And that's not what I mean at all! The physical act of having sex is such a small part of sexuality for almost everyone – I mean, I haven't met anyone for whom that's it, that's the end of their sexuali [...]

Having recently spent a lot of time poking around on the internet looking for Queer organizations that recognize or support asexuality (you know, for our Knowledge Base) I’ve become just one more of many people to notice just how ridiculous some groups’ acronyms have become. Sure, there are LGBs and LGBTs, and most people are familiar with those, but there are also LGBTQs, LGBTAs, LGBTUs, LGBTIs, LGBTTs, LGBTQAs and even LGBTTTIQQAs.

And that’s just a quick sample of the acronyms in use. Not only is this rather overwhelming, but it’s pretty obvious that none of these can be pronounced without enunciating every single letter in turn. The most ridiculous one was allegedly coined by a representative of Wesleyan University, and goes something like ‘LGBTTQQFAGIPBDSM...’ which stands for ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Flexual, Asexual, Genderqueer, Intersex, Polyamourous, BDSM and anything else we might have forgotten’. Great, but what are the chances of anyone actually remembering that?

The only suggestion I came across that actually comes close to rolling of the tongue was coined by the magazine Anything That Moves, and that’s ‘FABGLITTER’ (Fetish, Allies, Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Intersexed, Transgender, Transsexual Engendering Revolution). Unfortunately, even this doesn’t include every possible sexual or gender-identity minority out there.

When most people think of think of sexual orientation, they think of it as meaning whether a person is straight, gay/lesbian, or bisexual—and then they usually ignore bisexual. One widely used model for sexual orientation—the Kinsey Scale—uses something like this, placing exclusive heterosexuality at one end of a line and exclusive homosexuality at the other end, with varying combinations in the middle. This has two main problems. First, bisexuals are half of one thing and half of another, but not wholly anything. Second, it has no way of accounting for the fact that asexuals exist. They don't fit anywhere.

In the late 70’s a University of Kansas Psychology Professor, Michael Storms, proposed a different model, putting heterosexual attraction on one axis, and homosexual attraction on another. His motivation for this was a similar model recently proposed for understanding masculinity and femininity.Traditionally, these had been understood on a model similar to the Kinsey scale—Masculine was at one end; feminine was at the other, androgynous was in the middle, in varying combinations of masculinity and femininity. Some people had objected to this: if someone is more masculine, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are less feminine. Some people are very masculine and very feminine (androgynous); some people are not particularly masculine or feminine (undifferentiated). A linear model groups these people [...]